The Holocaust and the Revival of Psychological History

Why did men and women in one of the best educated countries in the Western world set out to get rid of Jews? In this book, Judith M. Hughes focuses on how historians' efforts to grapple anew with matters of actors' meanings, intentions, and purposes have prompted a return to psychoanalytically informed ways of thinking. Hughes makes her case with fine-grained analyses of books by Hugh Trevor-Roper, Ian Kershaw, Daniel Goldhagen, Saul Friedländer, Christopher Browning, Jan Gross, Hannah Arendt and Gitta Sereny. All of the authors pose psychological questions; the more astute among them shed fresh light on the Holocaust - without making the past any less disturbing.

1. Hitler; 2. Nazi Germany and the Jews; 3. Willing executioners; 4. Examinations of conscience; 5. A battle with truth; 6. Conclusion.

Judith M. Hughes is a Professor of History and an Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego. She is also on the faculty of the San Diego Psychoanalytic Institute and has a small psychoanalytic practice. She is the author of seven previous books, including To the Maginot Line: The Politics of French Military Preparation in the 1920s; From Freud's Consulting Room: The Unconscious in a Scientific Age; From Obstacle to Ally: The Evolution of Psychoanalytic Practice; and Guilt and its Vicissitudes: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Morality.